Artemis II, a historic space mission, launched on April 1st. This marks the first crewed flight to the moon in over fifty years. The mission was a ten-day lunar fly-by that took the crew farther away from the Earth than any human has ever gone — about 253,000 miles away. The crew included three US astronauts: Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, and Victor Glover; and one Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hansen.
This flight was historic for NASA and also for women. Only twelve percent of people who have gone into space are women, partly because women were systematically barred from becoming astronauts during NASA’s first space missions. Christina Koch, a mission specialist on Artemis II, is part of that twelve percent and is a trailblazer for women in space.
Koch attended North Carolina State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in both electrical engineering and physics in 2001 and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering in 2002. After graduating, Koch began working as an electrical engineer at NASA, where she developed space science instruments.
Koch has worked many different jobs in space and engineering since her first job at NASA.
Similar to her first job, she later held a position developing space science instruments at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory’s Space Department.
She also worked at the United States Antarctic Program as a research associate. This job included a yearlong stay in Antarctica, with a 7-8 month period at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and a season at Palmer Station. She also served as a member of the Firefighting and Search and Rescue Teams. Koch worked again in remote scientific research in Antarctica, Greenland, American Samoa, and Alaska.
She eventually found herself back at NASA as one of eight members of the 21st astronaut class in 2013, a class with a record-breaking four women. She launched on her first spaceflight to the International Space Station on March 14, 2019, along with Cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and Astronaut Nick Hague. On October 18, 2019, she participated in the first all-female spacewalk.
She returned on February 6, 2020, spending 328 days in space, the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman.
Koch does much more at NASA than just spaceflights. She is involved in the scientific and engineering side of NASA, doing robotics for upgrades to a Spectrometer, growing protein crystals for research, and testing 3D biological printers in microgravity.
On April 10th, 2026, Artemis II re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down into the Pacific Ocean at 8:08 p.m. EST, completing the historic 10-day mission.
Koch and the rest of the Artemis II crew have forever left an impact on NASA. Koch will continue to inspire many female astronauts to come.